The thought of having to repeat the job on all the remaining tubes had two sides to it. On one side she was now sure she could join all the tubes together and end up with a fairly long antenna. On the other, it was going to take ages. But then again, she had nothing much better to do.
Two hours later, Kate had made holes in the pointed end of all the stakes and had put biners through all the blunt end holes. Each stake was about four feet long and she had around fifty of them. “Should be long enough,” but she wasn’t really sure. She had no idea what antenna length was needed. But this was what she had, and it was enough to try with.
The next problem was how to get them assembled in line and outside the hab without losing any of them or dropping the whole thing down the side of the wall.
Kate took one of the long lengths of line and attached it to the ladder in the ops room. Then she clipped every stake to the line by its biner. At the far end of the line she made a loop and tied a figure eight knot that she pulled as tight as she could. She clipped a biner into the loop.
She put her dive suit back on and then the scuba gear. After one last check to make sure everything was lined up right on the floor, she dropped down the ladder holding the end of the line.
In the moon pool room, Kate pulled another of the floating BCs down from the ceiling and dumped almost all of the air out of it. She clipped the line to the BC. She didn’t need it to float yet, just to prevent the biners from sliding off the line. Now she felt like she wasn’t going to lose anything. It was a lot like rock climbing. When you were setting up or breaking down an anchor it was really important not to lose any gear or inadvertently untie yourself. “Be slow, be careful, check it twice.”
She let the BC go and it floated slowly up to the ceiling of the moon pool room again. Kate climbed up the ladder and grabbed a few of the stakes and pulled them over the edge and let them go. They drifted down the line onto the floor below her. It didn’t take long before all the stakes were out of the ops room. Kate went back down the ladder. “Oh shit.”
The stakes were in a tangled pile with the rope. But at least they were all sat in one place.
Kate pulled down the BC on the end of the line. She attached a dive weight to it so it was slightly negatively buoyant and carefully let it go down through the moon pool exit. The rope slid through her hands from under the pile of stakes. She had to stop occasionally to fix a tangle. There was very little weight on the rope and she could hold it easily just by winding it around her leg. The fin made it a bit difficult but one loop was enough to stop it from sliding away on its own. Once all the rope had been let out, she took a look over the edge of the pool exit. The yellow rope disappeared into the darkness. The darkness was always there. There was no light down here and nothing much to light up anyway. If it weren’t for the lighting in the moon pool room, none of the rope would have been visible at all.
One by one Kate found the stake clipped closest to the end of the rope and attached the next one to it. As the increasing collection of joined stakes dropped down the line, Kate wondered if it was going to get too heavy to control, but the aluminum poles weighed almost nothing in the salt water. When she got to the last pole she still had a lot of line left over. She made a loop in the line and then formed a clove hitch into which she clipped the final biner on the chain of poles. Then she lowered the remaining line down the hole until it was taut. Kate grabbed another of the BCs from the ceiling, deflated it and with a final thought that there was just one knot up above in the ops room holding the entire thing up, she dropped down through the exit and slowly followed the line down until she found the start of the line of poles. Looking up, she could see she was about fifty feet below the hab. “That should be enough.”
She clipped the BC to the top of the first pole, finned slightly to be out from under the hab and then used the mouth inflator on the BC to blow it up. As gas entered the BC it started to counteract the weight of the stack of poles. Kate hoped that one BC would be enough to float all of them up. After several breaths, the BC was full and she was starting to rise slowly with the poles. “All right.”
As she came level with the top of the hab she stopped and let the poles slide up through her open hand. As the last few came into view she grabbed hold of the poles and swam over to one of the lifting eyes and grabbed hold of it with her other hand. She made a loop in the line after the last pole and tied it to the eye. She looked up to see a nice line of poles disappearing into the darkness above her. Checking the knot to make sure it was holding she moved over slightly and grabbed the end of the ELF antenna wire that also disappeared into the black above.
It took a minute to haul it down and clip it to the last biner on the line of poles. Checking the antenna was secured to the poles, she released the line from the lifting eye and watched the whole assembly float back up. The poles disappeared into the darkness and were followed by the antenna wire. She could just see the glint from the metal reflected in her dive light. The wire pulled taut and Kate gave it a tug to make sure it wasn’t being pulled up too hard. The tug pulled down the wire easily and when she let go it floated lazily back up. With a last glance in the direction of the wire she swam back down the side of the hab and up into the ops room.
The whole exercise had taken her about an hour. She felt pleased with the effort and excited to see if the ELF transmitter was going to work now.
At the console, Kate tapped the POST button again and waited a few seconds. The result lit up with a green “OK.”
She was still in her dive suit but far too excited to think about taking it off. She wanted to send at least one message to the surface. It was an easy choice. She scrolled down the list of pre-made messages and tapped on “SOS”.
“That should wake them up,” she thought.
Comms
In the comms room on the surface barge, Williams was asleep in a plastic chair with his feet up on the desk. Next to him, the comms tech was reading a book when the ELF receiver let out a loud series of beeps. The technician nearly dropped the book in his surprise. With his free hand he hit Williams on the legs. “Wake up sir. We have a message from the Pheia.”
Williams hadn’t been asleep long and it took him a moment to differentiate between a possible dream story and reality. “What?”
“We have a message from Pheia. It’s an SOS”
Williams looked at the console. There were three lines in red; each with the SOS message on them.
“OK, someone is alive down there and they need help. I guess that goes without saying. I don’t suppose the ELF unit could send this by itself could it?”
“No way. This is a bona fide, real, dyed in the wool E.L.F. message. How do you want to respond sir?”
“Let me think a second. We need to acknowledge we have received the message then send something short to say we are going to help. Can we also send a longer text message?”
“Sure. The three letter codes are fastest of course and we repeat those three times so there is no ambiguity at the Pheia. Then we can send your text message.”
“What can we send that makes sense? We have no idea who is down there watching the receiver so it needs to be obvious.”
“Why don’t we just send “OK” and then whatever else you want to say?”
“OK is only two letters.”
“Yes it is sir, but we’ll go crazy and pad it out with a space if that’s alright?”
Williams looked at the technician. Humor? Insolence? Did it matter?
“OK. Send the OK, then I’ll type something longer in if I may.”